Democrats fail to turn out in sufficient numbers for Santorum

If Rick Santorum, after having aggressively solicited the votes of Democrats, had beaten Mitt Romney by three points in Michigan yesterday rather than the other way around, the open primary system, which “openly” invites each party to sabotage the other’s nominating process, would have been seen more clearly as the egregious thing that it is. Maybe the experience would have stirred the Republicans out of their slumber and they would have changed this outrageous system.

As it happened, Santorum’s unprincipled appeal for Democrats’s support in the Michigan Republican primary seems to have backfired on him, much as Ronald Reagan’s similarly unprincipled appeal to Democrats in the 1976 Michigan Republican primary backfired on him. The Daily Mail’s U.S. correspondent Toby Harnden writes today:

Team Romney: Rick Santorum’s ‘political treason’ over Democrat robocalls helped doom him in Michigan

Late-breaking voters went overwhelmingly for Mitt Romney in today’s Michigan primary as Rick Santorum’s robocalls to Democratic voters, who failed to turn out in big numbers, apparently encouraging Republicans to turn out to back the former Massachusetts governor.

“The robocalls backfired,” a Romney adviser told me at the candidate’s victory event in Novi. “Rick Santorum committed political treason and he was punished for it by Republicans. We were nervous about the robocalls and the polls always tighten at the end but by 2pm we could see that turnout was low in Democratic areas.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 29, 2012 10:41 AM | Send